Home of the Resistance & Uppland at Open City Documentary Festival

In Kumrovec in 1974, communist authorities built the Memorial Home for WWII Resistance Fighters and Youth of Yugoslavia, a building that has lain dormant since its closure in 1991. Ivan Ramljak’s atmospheric spatial study Home of the Resistance (Ivan Ramljak, 2018, Croatia) stares through the modernist architectural elegance to reveal, within its ruined walls, the spectres of the past.

Edward Lawrenson’s Uppland (2018, UK + Ireland), made with architect Killian Doherty, looks at the remote highlands of Liberia, where a once thriving mining town now stands abandoned, decaying and desolate: a concrete ruin in the West African bush. It is a film about architecture; the remnants of colonialism; and the spiritual cost of industrial mining.